Xinhua, Chengdu :
The rescue of 15 infants by Chinese police from a 78-member child-trafficking gang has drawn attention to poverty and lack of legal awareness in the country’s poorest regions. The 15 infants, with the youngest only four days old, have been sent to welfare institutions for temporary placement. Most hail from the Yi Autonomous Prefecture of Liangshan in Sichuan Province, southwest China. Just ten days ago, they were waiting to be sold some 2,000 km from their homes, according to sources with Sichuan police.
Blood samples of the 15 infants have been taken in order to help find their parents through a national DNA database. Most of the infants were sold voluntarily by their parents, according to Chen Shiqu, director of the anti-human trafficking office under the Ministry of Public Security. Chen added that poverty has always been the motivation for parents to sell their infants. In 2013, Liangshan had 13.5 percent of its population, or about over 600,000 people, living below the national poverty line (defined as annual per capita net income of 2,736 yuan, or 415 U.S. dollars).
Children are not commodities, and exchanging them for money is illegal, but couples living in remote areas are just “too poor and too numb” to comprehend the law, Chen said.
A police investigation showed that parents could receive 20,000 yuan for a baby boy, two to three times the annual income of a local family. Boys were sold for 50,000 to 60,000 yuan, while girls were sold for between 20,000 and 30,000 yuan.
In the joint operation launched by Sichuan and Shandong police under the supervision of the Ministry of Public Security, a couple was discovered to have traveled frequently from Liangshan with infants to Linyi City in the coastal province of Shandong, east China, returning empty-handed. Police found that the woman purchased infants from parents in poor villages and recruited other women, who pretended to be mothers, to transport babies to Linyi by train.
The rescue of 15 infants by Chinese police from a 78-member child-trafficking gang has drawn attention to poverty and lack of legal awareness in the country’s poorest regions. The 15 infants, with the youngest only four days old, have been sent to welfare institutions for temporary placement. Most hail from the Yi Autonomous Prefecture of Liangshan in Sichuan Province, southwest China. Just ten days ago, they were waiting to be sold some 2,000 km from their homes, according to sources with Sichuan police.
Blood samples of the 15 infants have been taken in order to help find their parents through a national DNA database. Most of the infants were sold voluntarily by their parents, according to Chen Shiqu, director of the anti-human trafficking office under the Ministry of Public Security. Chen added that poverty has always been the motivation for parents to sell their infants. In 2013, Liangshan had 13.5 percent of its population, or about over 600,000 people, living below the national poverty line (defined as annual per capita net income of 2,736 yuan, or 415 U.S. dollars).
Children are not commodities, and exchanging them for money is illegal, but couples living in remote areas are just “too poor and too numb” to comprehend the law, Chen said.
A police investigation showed that parents could receive 20,000 yuan for a baby boy, two to three times the annual income of a local family. Boys were sold for 50,000 to 60,000 yuan, while girls were sold for between 20,000 and 30,000 yuan.
In the joint operation launched by Sichuan and Shandong police under the supervision of the Ministry of Public Security, a couple was discovered to have traveled frequently from Liangshan with infants to Linyi City in the coastal province of Shandong, east China, returning empty-handed. Police found that the woman purchased infants from parents in poor villages and recruited other women, who pretended to be mothers, to transport babies to Linyi by train.
